The income tax (I-T) department may be hiring! Faced with an acute shortage of manpower, the department is considering novel ways of ramping up the headcount. The department may rope in the Banking Services Recruitment Board (BSRB) as part of the process .

Confronted with the enormous task of hiring 13,300 people (10,000 new personnel and 3,300 already sanctioned by the Cabinet), the department is toying with the idea of handing over the recruitment charge to the BSRB, sources with the department said.

A proposal in this regard is likely to be finalised soon for cabinet approval.

The BSRB, which used to conduct recruitment exams for public sector bank jobs, recently expanded its activities by undertaking recruitment-related activities for other industries. The public sector banks now follow their in-house recruitment procedures.

The tax department is faced with an acute staff shortage of 10,000. It had earlier asked the Cabinet to make an exception to the rule of appointing only one person on retirement of three people. But this was turned down by the Cabinet. In fact, the Cabinet had sanctioned only 3,300 posts, as against the requirement of 6,600 some time ago.

Meanwhile, the central board of direct taxes (CBDT) was recently asked to make a projection of its manpower requirement till 10, which had estimated creation of additional 10,000 posts.

These estimates were made taking into account field requirements and other developments that have taken place in taxation. These posts are at a level junior to that of the Indian Revenue Service posts, for which selection is done through civil service examinations.

The finance minister P Chidambaram had recently made a mention of the acute staff shortage at an annual conference of chief commissioners and director generals of I-T and had asked the board to expedite the process.